Shogumaza
by Dicedcarrots
Summary: These emotions weren't hers, and even if she allowed herself to indulge in them, she knew that they could never be hers. She was nothing. And it was with nothing she knew she would die with. So to take her final dance with these cloaked grim reapers; well, she figured it would be fun while it lasted. OC centered, pre Naruto.
1. Prologue

**A/N:** I never thought I would use this account to actually write fanfiction, and it's a little strange to me. Nonetheless, I'm excited! This is my first story so I have to give the obligatory "please excuse my mistakes".

This is only a prologue so I don't want it to be long winded, but I hope it's presentable.

Enjoy!

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-Prologue-

The termination of all biological functions that sustain an organism. In one word; death. Anybody with a functioning brain could see that's where i was. I don't say that as in "at deaths door" or in the metaphorical sense of me just doing something incredibly stupid. I was dead in the sense that my body would never move again, I would never eat, breathe, speak. My body was to lay in a pool of my own blood until ravenous animals decided to tear my rotting flesh to pieces.

Maybe that wouldn't happen. Maybe some unfortunate sap would come across my mutilated corpse and mourn my premature demise, perhaps digging a grave so i could rot there instead. I would have chuckled at the thought if my vocal cords where still intact.

The truth is, I knew this would happen. From the beginning I knew my days were limited. In fact, I welcomed it. Why would I, as far from being human as I was, have any reason to remain on this earth for as long as I already had? I had no desires. Nothing to look forward to, and nothing I cared about. One could say I was empty.

Well one could say I truly was empty now, being dead and all. The only thing I had left were memories. Memories of me. Everything was laid out in front of my cold eyes, as if for 17 years someone had written down every detail of my life. Things I thought I couldn't remember and things I always remembered clear as day were now floating in front of me like pages torn out of book.

I could still feel my body though. i could feel the dull throb of pain as blood escaped my wounds. I felt blood in my mouth and throat as i struggled more with each breath. And as I lay face up, my peripheral vision failed me, leaving me to stare straight up at the beautiful blue sky above. The grin on my face widened when I noticed there wasn't a star in sight.

This was it. I was finally reaching the end I had been craving for so long, and the best part was that there wasn't a single star, a single constellation. The sky stared down at my despicable self and smiled back. Tomorrow would be the same. The sky would smile down the same it always had. Except I had finally, _finally_ escaped it. I felt my senses grow numb, my vision growing fuzzier and fuzzier. I no longer heard the birds or felt the wind, no longer smelt my blood. My consciousness wobbled as my internal organs were shutting down.

Everything was fading and my sense of self slipped from my grasp until all i could remember was one thing. He was there.

And despite all my fears, he would stay there.

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 **A/N:** So? How was it? Oh god I hope it's not boring ;_;

I hope you enjoyed this short prologue, and please stay tuned for the next chapter! I don't have a posting schedule worked out yet, but I'll try to get on that.


	2. First memory: Red of the Morning

_-First Memory: Red of the Morning-_

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An open window held its arms in a warming welcome to the cold breeze that had been fluttering around the mountainous terrain of kumogakure. It was a goose bump inducing, breath stealing kind of breeze, proof of which could be seen on the lanky girl that lay curled within herself on the bed by the open window in question.

Soft breathing could be heard from up close, and with careful observance once could pick out the slight twitch of her right arm and the movement of her eyes behind her eyelids. They could see the long eyelashes feathering against her cheeks and how her light hair framed her caramel face in an untamable mess.

With the wind rustling through the small room, she seemed to curl further into herself, holding her knees close to her chest like a child.

A quick study of the room showed the bed, pushed right against the open window and buried in pillows and thick blankets. A small bedside table with what appeared to be her hitai-ate and a pouch of weapons was pushed in to a spot she could easily reach from her position on the bed and on an opposite wall was a short white dresser.

Overall the room was quite straightforward, there were no pictures or colours, just the bare necessities that indicated a shinobi lived there, like the Kumogakure jounin vest thrown haphazardly on the floor and the pile of kunai shoved in a pile in the corner of the room.

The shinobi in question however, was still comfortably sleeping in her burrow of blankets, despite the fact that the alarm clock on her bedside table read it was a half past two in the afternoon. If it had gone off earlier in the morning, chances were high she had just reached a clawed handed over and clumsily tuned it off.

Though, there was also the possibility that she hadn't set it to go off in the first place.

Regardless, because of her decision to sleep in so late, there were probably going to be troublesome consequences; not that she could reflect on that right now though. She was still dreaming of something irrelevant, curled into a scrawny ball of long legs and tired kunoichi.

So when an unparalleled force began to barrel its way through the thick clouds to reach her apartment in a blind hurry, she was supposed to be none the wiser.

"Supposed to be" being the operative words. After all, Kou was a trained jounin of one of the five great nations, so by the time said "unparalleled force" had reached the 1 mile mark from her apartment, she finally began to stir, as her nose became overwhelmed with the scent of impending doom.

Or obnoxious teammate, depending on how you look at it. For Kou, it unfortunately happened to be the former.

She immediately recognized the scent of course and set to clear her muddy thoughts from the sleep induced haze before he busted into her home as per usual.

She normally wouldn't care to wake her self up for this kid, but when you have a teammate about to hurl himself into your home and probably break, like, everything when he got there, you can see how being tired would be a bit of an inconvenience in that situation.

Of course Kou's definition of "waking herself up" still left a lot to be desired. For how much she claimed to care about her worldly possessions, she really wasn't living up to expectations when it came to _protecting_ said worldly possessions.

So she began slowly unfurling from her position and stretching her back, popping a few bones in the process. A husky groan escaped her throat as she blinked rapidly and rubbed her face to get that nasty eye gunk out of her eyes.

She sat up, in a sad state of wanting to get up and stop Hisato from busting in, but being too lazy to get up fully. Because getting up meant being productive. And we can't have that now can we?

 _What could he even want this time?_ She wondered with a huff. She closed her eyes and tried to recall any kind of important thing that _might_ be happening that day, but her mind was still groggy and hunger was settling in.

But besides that, she could smell his scent approaching fast. With one eye cracked open, she stumbled out of bed, losing her balance slightly as a blanket had twisted around her leg. She shook it off, cursing under her breath and looked to where it landed on the floor, right next to her abandoned jounin jacket.

 _Ah._ She remembered with a dreaded clarity. _That happened yesterday didn't it?_

Before she could linger on that train of thought any longer, to now try to remember what she had agreed to, her ear twitched as the quiet pitter-patter of sandaled feet broke into her vast range of hearing.

She shuffled forward and leaned against her doorframe, with her head down, trying to mentally prepare herself for Hisato's aggressively extroverted personality.

There was an impatient knock on the front door, but she didn't bother answering it because she knew he was just going to let himself in immediately. Which he did. By kicking open the door of course.

"Kou! Are you ready?!" he shouted from across the apartment, something that was completely unnecessary. As he peered down the hall he caught sight of her and started stomping in her direction.

"Hisato, did you really feel the need to kick open the door?" She grumbled with a scratch of her head and pushed herself off the doorframe.

"You should be grateful I knocked. Besides, you look like you just rolled out of bed!" He stopped in the hall when he saw her approaching him in all her bedraggled glory. "Oh my god Kou you just rolled out of bed didn't you? Its almost three!"

"Such a nag." She grumbled, pushing him to the side so she could move past him in the narrow hall. She seemed to miss the way his eyes followed her hand scratching her stomach underneath her shirt, catching a peek of the toned skin beneath.

"You said you were going to bed early! Why are you waking up so late then?!" He fought off a blush, with determination not to let his hot teammate's stomach of all things throw him off task.

"I did go to bed early though" She said with a huff, which wasn't a lie. She walked into the main room of her apartment to see the front door, which had been nearly ripped off the hinges and the doorknob laying on the floor in a splintered mess. She sighed for maybe the fourth time that morning. Scratch that, it was the afternoon.

"Hisato, I really don't think Kichiro appreciates having to repair my front door every time you decide to kick it down. Especially when you could literally just wait for me to answer the door." She rubbed the back of her head thoughtfully, listening to Hisato turn back to approach her from behind. She crouched down to mournfully pick up a small piece of splintered wood.

"I don't think he minds. Besides, you take _forever_ to answer the door." She turned her head slightly to shoot him a raised eyebrow, Hisato fighting fruitlessly to keep down a blush "Th-that's not the point! Kichiro is waiting for us, and you promised to meet us for lunch almost two hours ago!"

"Ah. So that's what it was…"

"Don't tell me you forgot! I just got promoted to jounin and you couldn't even remember the lunch date we all planned to celebrate?" He looked down at her from where she was crouching to inspect the damage done to her door. She stood up, not minding the popping in her ankles from the sudden shift of weight, and brushed passed Hisato to head back into her room.

"I wouldn't even dream of forgetting, Hisato." She said dryly.

"Ugh, don't bother lying. Just…hurry up and get ready!" He said impatiently, swiveling to point an accusing finger at her disappearing figure. She waved him off without turning her head and entered her room, closing the door behind her.

She went through the quick routine of getting dressed, which really didn't involve much. She tossed on a black shirt, one that split horizontally near the neckline and on the short sleeves into a light mesh material, then some simple baggy beige pants that ended below her knees, with three white stripes going across the right leg.

She sat on the bed to pull on her shoes and the wristband that bore her hitai-ate, but rather than getting up afterward to meet Hisato, who was guaranteed to be waiting impatiently outside, she fell back onto the bed to bask in the soft sunlight and cool breeze.

It was so comfortable there; she could inhale the fresh mountain air and simply bask in all the scents surrounding the village. If she sat and concentrated, she could pick each smell apart from each other, and identify most of them. Sometimes her powerful nose would overwhelm her with scents and give her massive migraines, but this wasn't one of those times.

She closed her eyes and inhaled again, feeling a drought of drowsiness wash over her. She was always nagged about how she could seemingly will herself asleep at any and every time and thought Hisato was going to bust down that door any minute now and drag her out, so why willingly go out before she had to?

Of course right at that precise moment she heard impatient footsteps stomp right up to her door and with an angry shove; Hisato had opened the door only to freeze in his tracks. She cracked open an eye to see his unimpressed stare and arms crossed.

"Okay, yeah we're not playing this game today, Kou. C'mon, you're getting up and we're going to meet Kichiro like you _promised_ you would." He whined, giving her a stern glare before grabbing her by her arms and dragging her forwards. She groaned at his manhandling, but accepted being dragged back out into the hallway. He shifted his grip around her upper arm, so he was grabbing her elbow instead, but paused at the texture of fur he felt on the outside of her arm. He tried to quickly gather himself and continue on as if nothing had happened, but she wasn't dumb enough to have missed his hesitation.

"What? Did you forget that I'm turning into an actual animal, Hisato?" she asked with a devious smirk inching up her face. She noticed his ear turning red with embarrassment and how he lifted his other hand to cover his face.

"Sh-shut up idiot. I'm just not used to girls who don't shave." He blurted in an attempt to bury his shame. She just laughed loudly at his act. "Yeah yeah, laugh it up. Lets just keep going." He said with renewed determination and tugged her forward even more force, prompting an even louder laugh and brighter ears.

~Line break~

It was a small but lively restaurant, one that was commonly frequented by shinobi coming back from missions and wanting a drink from the bar, or gennin being treated by their sensei to dinner for a successful day of training.

The owner was a rosy-cheeked man who enjoyed telling stories of days gone by when he himself was a shinobi who fought in the third great shinobi war for Kumo's forces. He was very personable, and not afraid to ask lone ninja of their travels and troubles. While some would think him insensitive for this, he always knew when to back off, a large reason for which many shinobi felt comfortable enough to frequent. That, and he gave nice discounts to them.

This time his target of interest however, was the figure sitting hunched at the bar, by himself. He was a tall but lean shinobi with a spill of dark curly hair that reached just above his brow, and thin, calculating eyes. He was politely laughing at something the man had said, but anyone could tell it was as fake as the hand that gripped his glass of whiskey, or whatever amber alcohol it happened to be. The rosy-cheeked man looked to be about to say something more, when he noticed some customers who had entered and needed catering.

"Excuse me Mr. Harigae, I need to tend to these folks. Until your friends get here, you just have whatever you want; it's on me." He said with a wide smile and twinkling eyes.

"Ah, thank you very much sir. I hope they won't be too much longer." He said with a bow of his head. The man chuckled before patting him on the shoulder and waddling off to greet his patrons.

The dark haired man turned back around and downed the rest of his drink with a sigh. He checked the watch on his prosthetic arm and decided it wouldn't hurt to have another drink while he waited. Just before he was able to wave over another bartender however, he heard the telltale voice of his best friend bursting into the establishment.

He turned to face the door once again and saw Hisato in the middle of telling an animated story to the tall, skinny girl who lagged behind him with a blank expression on her face. As they walked further, Kou looked up and made eye contact with the dark haired man, gesturing to Hisato to look over. Hisato whipped his head toward him, and the smile that lit up his face was almost enough for him to be forgiven. He jogged up to him, Kou still lagging behind at a much more relaxed pace.

"Kichiro! Sorry we took so long, you know how Kou likes to take forever to get ready." He said rubbing the back of his head nervously. It was _almost_ enough. But not quite.

"I've been here for. Three. Hours. Now I can understand Kou taking forever, its what she does." Kichiro's expression turned on a dime into an irritated snarl as he jabbed a finger into Hisato's face. "But I know it didn't take you _three hours_ to get her off her ass and moving."

Hisato gulped.

"Well, uhh…I might have taken a bit of a detour on the way there?" Kou quirked her eyebrow at that, Kichiro noticed.

"Oh? Who was nagging at me for sleeping in? Was it the guy who put off dearest Kichiro for three hours, while he went and frolicked around the village?" She said, a nasty smirk finding its way onto her face. Hisato gulped as he looked up a Kichiro who was rolling his eyes.

"Really, just shut up, Kou." Kichiro said scathingly, whipping back over to his friend "Hisato, you were the one who planned this! This was supposed to be a celebration for your promotion to jounin! What the hell were you doing?!"

"I uh… might have been going to see… Sanako…" He said quietly, glancing over at Kou quickly and blushing at his admittance. Kichiro was always amazed at his ability to flirt with other girls while being so blatantly enamored by Kou. He pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation but before he was able to say anything more, the rosy-cheeked man had returned with a broad smile on his face.

"Ah Mr. Ainara, Ms. Kou! I see you were the two Mr. Harigae was waiting for. Well now, take a seat! Did you have any idea what you were going to order?" He asked warmly. Hisato hesitantly sat next to Kichiro while Kou all but fell onto her stool next to Hisato. She was about to say something when Kichiro piped up, his expression carefully schooled to a polite smile.

"No sir, they haven't decided yet. We'll call you when we're ready though, thank you." He said, switching to formal speech in the blink of an eye. The man took this as his dismissal and wondered off once again. Kou flicked her eyes to him with a quick irritated glance but then settled on leaning into her hand, staring off into space.

"Wow, I'm always amazed at how good you are at switching personalities. If I didn't know any better, I would think you had bipolar disorder, Kichiro!" Hisato said cheerily, though Kichiro could still see the bobbing of his Adam's apple and the sweat on his temple.

"Don't think I've forgiven you yet, you two idiots." Kichiro grumbled, lower this time so the owner wouldn't overhear him.

"Oi, this time its not-"

"Save it Kou! Ill just forget about it for now, but only because this is supposed to be a congratulatory gathering for Hisato's promotion." He snapped. Kou trained a glare on him before huffing and turning away again.

Kichiro had a generally high blood pressure, but he found that whenever Kou was around, it seemed to triple. He had known her since he was six or seven, and for all of those years he had never been able to properly evaluate how she thought.

The obvious assumption was that she was a lazy, manipulative person, but Kichiro was supposed to be a master at reading people. And the one thing he could pick up on her, was that almost everything she did was an act. Her parents had already been dead when he met her, and at that time she was a reserved in a lot different way. She wasn't as lazy back then, but more…blank. She had nothing in her, and even now it sometimes felt like the emotions she displayed were fake.

Hisato seemed to have nothing but trust in her, he was head over heels and everybody knew it. Even Kou, and she only seemed to pretend other wise. She was just a suspicious person to him, so much that even her ninjutsu was twisted to him. He had always kept a calculating eye on her, but especially since the end of the war-

"Oh yeah that reminds me! Lets get some drinks guys, I want to actually celebrate!" Hisato cut into Kichiro's thoughts with his usual oblivious cheer. He glanced once more at Kou, who was pretending not to be there and cleared his throat.

"Two things Hisato. One; we're only seventeen. Two; its four in the afternoon, hardly a time to be drinking." He said, leaving out the part where he had been drinking just before they arrived.

"Aw don't be such a downer Kichiro. Besides, we're all jounin so the drinking age doesn't really apply to us. You want to have a drink, don't you, Kou?" Kou snapped her head over once she heard her name

"What?"

"What? Were you not listening?"

"…Not really"

"Gahh! Kichiro can you belive this?! She never listens when I'm talking!" Hisato complained loudly while Kou stared with a blank expression at her sharpened nails. Kichiro had noticed them grow sharper and longer as time passed, and he had his suspicions it wasn't something she did on purpose.

"Actually, yeah I can." Kichiro deadpanned

"Hey! Ugh you guys are both such killjoys…" Hisato grumbled, crossing his arms on the bar and resting his head on them. Kou glanced over briefly before returning to her thorough inspection of her tanned hands. It was silent for a few brief moments and Kichiro was right about to relent and wave over the bartender for a round when Hisato suddenly popped his head up and waved the bartender over himself.

"Hey! Can I open a tab?" Hisato launched into ordering them drinks, not really bothering to ask what either of them would like. Kichiro inhaled sharply through his nose, mentally preparing himself for a night of hell.

~Line break~

She wasn't drunk. Realistically thinking, if her body to weight ratio was taken into account, she should have been impossibly wasted. But she wasn't. Maybe buzzed, but it was only a nice fuzzy feeling, nothing compared to Kichiro and Hisato. They were both idiots, Hisato getting himself so shamelessly drunk and Kichiro trying to keep up and _not_ let on just how smashed he was, but failing miserably.

She was almost enjoying herself, sitting back and watching them embarrass themselves. They had relocated to a booth in the back of the bar at Kichiro's recommendation a few hours ago when he was still sort-of-but-not-really sober. Every so often she glanced over at the watch on his fake hand, that read 8:23 a little while ago, which was impressive. That meant they'd been there for a solid four hours, which was weird because it didn't seem that long.

Well…She had slept for maybe an hour and a half before waking up to the sound of a Hisato and Kichiro having a heated discussion about which of the leaf sannin would win in a fight, which was irritating to say the least, and after that Hisato refused to let her fall back asleep.

After Hisato ordered the first round of drinks they had actually ordered food (at her request because she hadn't eaten yet) and sat over that for about an hour, before remembering that alcohol was a thing.

She was sure they were keeping in mind limits this time, or at least Kichiro was, since the one time Hisato got into a fight and needed medical attention because of a leg injury and minor alcohol poisoning.

She may have slept for a good chunk of time but Hisato made sure she wasn't too far behind them with her alcohol intake, which was thoughtful but unnecessary.

She didn't miss the glare Kichiro would shoot her way every so often when Hisato would say something to her. She was perfectly aware of his feelings for her, and honestly she couldn't care less about them. She had a feeling Kichiro knew this too and he didn't appreciate it. Then again she knew he was wary of her, he always had been.

She heard a sigh to her left and looked to see Hisato staring thoughtfully at his glass. They had been quiet for a few minutes, seemingly starting to wear down from all the drinking.

"Man, I really wish Nao-sensei could be here ta see us" Hisato said before knocking back the rest of his drink and drawing mindless circles on the empty glass. Kou glanced over to see Kichiro suddenly grow solemn at the sound of her name. Hisato had a somber look in his eye but it wasn't nearly as lamenting as Kichiro's. "Do y'think she'd be proud?" He asked

She heard Kichiro's breath hitch. He licked his lips and gulped, looking like he was trying to choose his words carefully through his intoxicated state.

"I think…" He hesitated before looking up and forcing down that strange glint in his eyes. He forced a smile before continuing, "I think she'd be pissed at ya fer takin so long ta get ta jounin!" He was slurring his words, and she was sure half of it was on purpose. She didn't need to smell to know he didn't like this conversation.

"Aw c'mon Kichi, yer only got ta jounin…uh…" he paused as if he couldn't quite remember when Kichiro became a jounin before shaking his head and continuing, "Not a long time ago… y'know Kou-chan got ta jounin before both of us!" He turned his head to stare at Kou with unabashed puppy eyes and she didn't fail to notice the suffix he tacked on to her name, even if her mind was slightly muddy.

"Wasn' it like… six years ago?" He continued to ask. Kou noticed Kichiro's eyes flicker over to her with a thinly concealed look of suspicion. She leaned her head back, eyes closed.

"…Yeah. It was… four years after the war." She recalled briefly just how anticlimactic her promotion had been. She just got back from a mission with her squad, when the Raikage called her to his office to say she had been repeatedly recommended for promotion and he agreed. It was as simple as that.

She opened her eyes to see them both staring at her. Her eyes flicked to Kichiro and she remembered it was only about a year ago when he became a jounin.

"Wait…. that means its been.." Hisato paused again and this time counted on his fingers. "Ten years?! Guys we gotta… we gotta go see Nao-sensei!" He pounded his hand on the table before snatching it back when he discovered that, yes, punching solid wood is painful. She heard a scoffing sound before shifting her eyes back to Kichiro to see him looking at her, suddenly full of bitterness and spite.

"As if _that_ psycho is gonna wanna go. She _never cared_ when Nao died! She still doesn't." He tried to look menacing, which was a little successful because she believed he was genuinely mad at her, but also didn't work because he was right. She couldn't relate to their mourning when their sensei was killed in the war, and she couldn't relate to the sadness that still filled their eyes whenever she was brought up

She had always noticed Kichiro got a little bit more worked up than Hisato, but she suspected that was because he had a little bit of a boy crush on her when she was still alive, so her death had more of an impact on him. That and he was a lot more hotheaded than Hisato in general.

"Hey Kichi! S'not her fault! Ya can't make assumptions like that about Kou-chan" Hisato stood up and threw a glare in his best friend's direction. Kou slouched and watched the exchange, observed through her hazy eyes as Kichiro rose to his feet as well. She actually thought he was going to throw more insults her way, and it appeared he had some at the tip of his tongue, but he clenched his jaw and began to leave the booth.

"Doesn't matter what I say, yer never gonna believe anything I say about her anyway" He jabbed a finger at Kou, his face turning purple, and stumbled towards the exit of the bar, towards the darkened sky. Hisato seemed to panic and tried to shuffle out the booth as well after him, muttering slurred curses under his breath. Kou watched silently as Hisato almost face planted twice on the way out the door, where he grabbed on to Kichiro's arm and the two began to have an animated argument where they thought she was out of earshot.

She closed her eyes and debated listening in, it was their fault for forgetting she had incredibly enhanced senses so she could still hear them after all. In the end she decided she had had enough of the conversation, every time Nao's name popped up, Kichiro grew overly aggressive towards her and Hisato was too oblivious to pick up on why.

She knew why of course. Even though they had been training under her for about a year, when she died Kou felt nothing. It wasn't anything personal; Kou knew that even now if one of her teammates were to die, she wouldn't care.

At the time she didn't understand the meaning death held to other people, and by not grieving over her sensei with her teammates, she put herself on Kichiro's shit list for the next ten years. He just… couldn't understand how she could have spent all that time with them and still have felt _nothing._

She didn't blame him. With a locked jaw she placed her hand over her sternum, and gripped onto the fabric of her shirt. She glanced up to see Hisato and Kichiro still arguing, although it seemed to have cooled down a little bit.

She leaned her head back and thought of her powerful sense of smell, 100 times that of a normal human, and of the emotions she could distinguish through that sense. Then she thought of the emotions she could never bring _herself_ to feel.

Her hand clenched harder onto her shirt, nails slightly scraping the skin, the seal hidden by clothes.

It was all because of that wretched mark.

It was all because of _him._

* * *

 ** _A/N:_**

Holy hell Im back? And i have actual material?! hhaaha yeah, ive deleted the last chapter because it was useless and shitty, and ive taken the time to actually write out a sold story line. yeah, i think the only reason I made Kou was bc an idea for a character design popped into my head and i wanted to draw her, and then i wanted to give her a story, but i was too impatient to actually map out a story and ive never written a story and then a disaster was born. So hopefully things wont fall through this time? haha pls enjoy my self indulging story...


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